“You’re right, I’m not bald. It was always short, but you know that. Military-short. I started cutting it that way when I started working on the base. I got one of those electric clipper deals,” he said, running the imaginary shaver over his head. “Cheaper than haircuts, you know? I got used to doing it that way. And I was busy.”
“Too busy to get your hair cut?”
“Well . . .” He smiled. “Haircuts take time. I was busy. And then one day, I thought, why not just shave it? Why not see if I had—” He shrugged, looked at her, and laughed. “Any weird bumps on my head, or anything. And I kind of liked how it looked.”
“Tough,” she said again.
“Yeah. I guess. So what do you think? Tough? Or just bald? Better with hair?”
“Tough,” she said, “definitely. But maybe . . . You really want to know what I think?”
“I definitely want to know what you think.”
“Then, yes. Some hair. I remember military-short, and I thought it looked good. If you want my opinion.”
The server stopped by their table again. “You guys good?” she asked. “Anything else?”
Joe looked at Alyssa. “Another beer?”
“No, thanks. I’d better stop.”
“We’re good,” Joe told the woman, and she nodded and put the check down, exactly in the center of the table, and Alyssa put a hand on it.
“Let me get this,” she protested when Joe’s hand came down on top of hers. “Let me say thank you for taking me car shopping.”
“Nope.” He was pulling it out from under her palm. “No way.”
“Joe . . .” She sighed. “You bought me breakfast. You’ve spent the whole day helping me. You’ve done so much for me.”
“You’re welcome, but that doesn’t matter. Don’t you remember what your brothers said at Christmas?”
“What?”
“The guy pays the first time.” And every time. He’d been called a throwback, and he didn’t care. He could afford it, and he couldn’t sit back and watch a woman pull out her wallet. He just couldn’t.
“That was for a date,” she argued. “This isn’t a date.”
It had felt like a date to him. Too bad he’d been wrong. What was it she’d said? I’m not even your sister. But close enough, still. Too close. “Maybe it isn’t,” he said, “but it’s the first time the two of us have been out together, so it counts.”
“It does? Are those the rules?” she asked, all sweet and sassy again. “Another part of the Man Code that I’m unaware of?”
“That’s it,” he said, barely knowing what they were talking about, but sure of this. “Those are the rules. This is my job. I pay.”
She was smiling. “You seem pretty sure of that. So what’s my job, then?”
He smiled back at her. “To be here.”
Another Second Chance
When the doorbell buzzed the next evening, Alyssa groaned, kept her eyes firmly shut, and decided not to get up.
Sherry came in from the kitchen. “Was that the door?”
“Yeah. Probably selling something,” Alyssa said, opening her eyes with reluctance. “Don’t answer.”
A second insistent buzz, and Sherry went over to the intercom, pushed the button. “Hello?”
“It’s Joe.” Not even the tinny distortion of the cheap intercom system could disguise those low tones. Alyssa swung her feet off the coffee table and sat up.
“Hi, Joe.” Sherry said, her own voice perking right up. “Want to come up?”
“Please.”
Sherry pushed the button even as Alyssa hissed, “Wait!”
“Makeup time,” Sherry said, and headed for the bathroom.
Alyssa swore, shoved the heavy quilt off her, stood up, tripped herself, and finally got loose. She folded the quilt hastily, finished hanging it over the arm of the couch just as she heard the knock. She swore again. Why wasn’t Sherry answering it? What kind of a friend was she?
A second knock, and she gave it up, went and twisted the locks, pulled the lightweight hollow-core door open.
Joe stood there holding a box. A bulky, shiny white rectangular carton printed with a picture of something she didn’t instantly recognize, two and a half feet high and a couple wide.
“Hi,” he said. “I won’t stay long, just wanted to drop this off.”
“Uh . . . what?”
She stepped aside to let him in, and he turned with the thing in his arms, indicated her bedroom with a jerk of his head. “Heater,” he said economically. “For your room.”
“You brought me a heater?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking surprised. “You said it was cold, because you didn’t have heat. So I stopped by the hardware store after work and picked one up.”
“Uh . . . OK. Thank you,” she added hastily. She was painfully aware that her eyeliner was probably smudged into raccoon eyes, and that she didn’t have any lipstick on at all. And worst of all, she could tell she was breaking out on her chin. She wanted desperately to touch the spot, convinced that it had somehow grown into something huge, red, and disgusting since she’d got home. She kept her hand off it with a serious effort, did her best to turn the unblemished side of her face towards him.
“Maybe we should set it up,” Joe said patiently, and she realized that he was still standing there holding the box, and that it looked heavy. She darted to her bedroom door, opened it for him, shivered because, yeah, it was freezing in there, the reason she’d been in the living room. The reason she hadn’t even changed out of her work clothes yet, because she’d been too tired and it had been too cold.
He followed her inside, set the box down in the middle of the floor space, and pulled a metal gadget out of his pocket, squatted beside the box and opened a blade, because of course Joe carried around some sort of multipurpose survival tool. Naturally. She watched as he cut the box neatly along the front edge, down the two front sides, rolled the radiator-style electric heater out and removed the Styrofoam, then took a moment to cut the box all the way flat and fold it up, stacking the Styrofoam packing pieces on top.
Sherry came in halfway through the process, leaned against the doorway—made up, Alyssa noticed sourly, her curly hair perfectly, messily casual, her sweatshirt replaced by a snug green sweater that matched her eyes.
“Hi, Joe,” she said. “You being all capable and manly again?”
Joe gave her his crooked smile and stood up. “Hey, Sherry. Nah, just brought this over. How’s that bathtub faucet working for you?”
“Great,” she said. “I took a bubble bath last night, Sunday night luxury, you know, and it was so nice to lie there and relax without the drip. Thank you for fixing it for me. I really appreciate it.” Laying it on thick, Alyssa thought with another stab of irritation.
“No problem,” Joe said, then turned back to Alyssa. “I think it’ll work best to put it over here,” he said, rolling the big cream-colored appliance over next to the dresser and plugging in the cord. “You don’t want it right in front of the bookcase. Keep a good foot of clearance from the wall when it’s on, OK? And not right next to the bed, either.”
Alyssa glanced at the bed, wished she’d made it a little more neatly this morning, that it wasn’t covered with hastily discarded clothes, and that her closet door wasn’t open. And that her birth control pill case wasn’t sitting on the bedside table, she realized with horror. She edged her way around Joe and half-backed her way to the head of the bed, opened the drawer of the nightstand behind her, and shoved the case inside.
“OK,” she said, then remembered her chin again and tried to angle herself, which was impossible in the narrow space between the wall and her bed. “Thanks.”
“It’s filled with oil,” he said, positioning the heater to his satisfaction. “Pretty energy-efficient, so you shouldn’t see a big change in your electric bill. It’s got some different settings. Two switches, see, besides the dial? So if you just want a little heat, you turn this one, the left one. And if you wan
t medium heat, just the right one. Put both on, and it’ll be full heat. And this up here,” he continued, “that’s more of a thermostat. Here.” He squatted down again. “I’ll show you.”
She glanced at it. “Two switches. OK. Turn one on, turn both on, turn the dial up. I’ve got it.”
“It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “It actually works better in the midrange.”
She edged her way out from beside the bed, picked up the owner’s manual he’d set on her desk, set it down again. “I’m sure they tell you in here. I’ll look later.”
“I can just show you now.”
“I don’t want to look now. It was really nice of you. I know it was. Thank you. But I don’t want to look. I’m too cold right now.” She looked at the pile of debris instead, and her blotchy chin was quivering, because now she either had to go down and put it in the trash or look at it lying there, and her room was already messy.
He glanced up at her, startled, made an adjustment to the heater, then stood. “Bad first day?” he asked, his voice gentler. “Hard?”
“It’s just . . .” Despite her best efforts, her arm began to go up and down like an oil derrick, and the words were tumbling out. “My room’s a mess, and I’m cold, and it’s too hard. Moving, and the job, and . . . now it’s all messy,” she repeated, and turned away from him, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . I’m sorry. Thank you for bringing the heater.” And go away, she thought miserably. She shouldn’t have opened the door. She hadn’t wanted to see anybody tonight.
“Do you have a bathrobe?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“A bathrobe. Or a sweater.”
She gestured at the closet, her arm flapping again, and he took a quick look inside, pulled her fuzzy sweater off the hook, and helped her on with it. “How about going and getting something to eat?” he asked. “Did you have dinner?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to go anywhere. I mean,” she gulped, “thanks. No.”
He stood a moment, obviously thinking. “Tell you what. You go take a shower, get warmed up, put on some . . . “ He gestured at her blouse, skirt, and tights, her first-day clothes. “Some sweats or something. I’ll go get some Chinese food. What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and she could hear that it was more like a wail. She was acting like a baby, she knew, but she was at the end of her rope, and the rope was fraying fast.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll get some stuff. How about you?” he asked Sherry, still watching interestedly from the doorway. “What would you like?”
“Kung Pao Chicken,” she said brightly. “I know a great place, right around the corner. I’ll go with you to get it. We might as well sit there and wait for it. They give you tea.”
Joe hesitated a second. “All right. We’ll be back in half an hour or so,” he told Alyssa. “Take a shower. I’ll take this stuff down with me.” He gathered up the packing debris. “By the time you get out of the shower, your room will be warm, and you can change, and we’ll be back with dinner.”
Alyssa nodded, because she was too close to crying. And she did cry a little in the shower, because she was miserable, and she was making Joe feel like a big brother again, which was exactly what she didn’t want to do.
She did feel better when she got out, though. Her chin didn’t look nearly as bad as she’d feared, especially once she covered the spot with concealer, and her bedroom was warm now, and changing to yoga pants, a long sweater, and cozy socks helped, too.
Joe and Sherry came back with the food, set the white cartons on the coffee table, and Sherry stuck spoons in, brought over plates and napkins. Joe didn’t ask Alyssa what she wanted, just put a pile of rice on her plate and added some meat and vegetables, and she ate, and didn’t talk, and realized how hungry she’d been.
“Well,” Sherry said when they’d finished, “guess I’ll do the dishes.”
“I’ll only stay a couple more minutes,” Joe said. “I really just wanted to check in with Alyssa.”
Sherry looked at him. “All right, then.” She stood up, began to gather containers, and Joe stacked plates and forks for her.
“So.” He shifted on the couch to face Alyssa when Sherry had left the room. “Hard first day? Not as good as you thought? Not going to work out?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wrapping her sweater around herself a little more tightly. “I hope so. But it’s different from what I thought, because Suzanne’s leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“Yeah.” She laughed, though it really wasn’t funny. “Ain’t that a thing? She told me she knew when she interviewed me, but she couldn’t say yet, because she hadn’t given notice. She was really sorry,” she added bitterly, “but that doesn’t help much.”
“So what does that mean?” he asked. “For you?”
She shrugged helplessly. “They’ve hired a replacement. Some woman who’s been at the Carolyn G. Haskill Cancer Foundation, and Suzanne went on about how good she is, how she’s sure it’ll still be a wonderful opportunity for me. I just wish I’d met her.”
“When does she start?”
“Two weeks. Suzanne leaves in a week, then a week in between with nobody, just me, and then this new person—Helene—comes.”
“That means you’ll have two weeks to get familiar, though, right? So you won’t be brand-new, and you can be the one showing her around. Could even be better.”
“Yeah. I know, I told myself that. It was just a shock,” she tried to explain. “I was nervous already, and I’ve gone out on such a limb here. Moved, and the car, and using so much of my savings, and . . .” She took a breath, close to tears again, and admitted the truth. “What if it doesn’t work? What if she wants to hire her own person? What if she fires me right away, before I even have a chance?”
He didn’t tell her she was being silly, to her relief, or not to “borrow trouble.” She hated that phrase. She didn’t need to borrow it. Trouble happened. “Then you’ll find something else,” he said. “Then you’ll try again.”
“But this was supposed to be my big chance. This was my change.”
“It was a chance. Nothing’s the last chance. There’s always another chance. And the change was in you. You already made it.”
She looked at him, trying not to cry. She didn’t want him to talk. She wanted him to give her a hug, tell her everything would work out. She wanted him to hold her, but he didn’t, and she didn’t want to ask him and have it be awkward, so she didn’t.
“I’m being a baby,” she said. “I know it. I’m sorry. Thanks for coming over, but . . . I’m sorry.” Which made the tears come even closer.
“You’re not being a baby,” he said, getting up off the couch. “You’re tired, and you’ve had a hard day. Go to bed, and it’ll be better in the morning. Things are almost always better in the morning. But I’ll get out of here so you can do it. Say goodbye to Sherry for me, OK?”
She nodded miserably, got up and tried to smile, to thank him. And then she shut the door, went into her room, lay down on her messy bed, and cried.
But at least it was warm.
Yes, a Date
Three weeks later, on her way home from her second “first week” that month, she thought back on how she’d behaved that night and cringed yet again. Why did she always have to see Joe at her least competent, most vulnerable times? At her parents’ house at Christmas, while she was moving, the first day of a new job? Those were nobody’s shining moments, were they? Why couldn’t she see him when she was getting some professional award or something? Closing some deal? Not that she ever had got a professional award or closed a big deal, but she’d had a lot better moments than the ones she’d shared with him recently, that was for sure.
The next time she saw him, she resolved, she’d be all calm and self-assured, and she’d have good news to report. Because he’d been right, that had been a low point, and things had got a lot better.
She’d soaked up ev
erything she could from Suzanne during the one week she’d had with her, had put all her efforts during her in-between week into learning the fundraising software and familiarizing herself with Second Chance’s past campaigns, all the major donors and their backgrounds.
All that effort looked like it was going to pay off, because this was the end of her first week with Helene, the new Director of Development, and her new boss had invited her to lunch today, had listened to her ideas and even complimented her on them.
“I have a feeling we’ll make a good team,” Helene had said. “I realize you don’t have any development experience, but as long as you’re here to learn and here to work, I’ll be happy. Two heads are better than one, right? So if you have any bright ideas, please, go ahead and share. We need to shake this place up. There’s so much untapped potential here.”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” Alyssa said eagerly. “Especially in tech. We have hardly any tech companies contributing. Here they all are, getting more and more prominent, in the City and in Silicon Valley, too. They’re the only ones with money to burn, and they want to be good community citizens. And here we are, offering such a media-friendly opportunity. Individual children, right here in the United States. What could be more appealing than that? And yet we aren’t reaching them. I was thinking,” she said, taking a breath, because this was her chance, “maybe a campaign aimed specifically at them. Something that would grab them.”
“Great idea,” Helene said. “Too bad you’re not related to Alec Kincaid. That would really be perfect. You’re not, are you? Not a cousin, or anything?”
Her blue eyes held Alyssa’s, and Alyssa willed herself not to blush. “No, alas.” She laughed. She hated to lie, but she wanted to do this on her own. She’d come to think that Suzanne’s departure might have been a blessing in disguise after all. Now nobody knew who she was. She was free to make her own mark.
“No,” Helene said with a laugh of her own, “I guess that would be too good to be true. But when you get that killer idea worked out, who knows, your name might just get us a little further.”
Asking for Trouble (The Kincaids) Page 9
